Smash Notes

Why Refuse Ten Serendipity Locations?

at 37:19

From the episode: Can You Engineer Serendipity?

Answer

Chris Taylor says serendipity manufacturing is mostly the room. He spends most of his time curating who shows up in a very small 2000 square foot space so the collisions are high quality 90% of the time.

He has been there for 32 years and can put interesting people on a stage, or hold a wine tasting or a poker night, for an intimate group of 30 or 40. He says people overthink events. The hard part is getting the room right. AI helps him research people, and he still knows everybody there. His attitude is human on both sides. Anybody who comes to the store should go forward a little through him or a connection in his network. He calls it hand to hand combat, and he can personally manage it at one location. He says he thinks it is going great.

He is trying to shake off the founder addiction and curse and keep the work to one location. He wants to know how much impact he can have from one location, because he enjoys being in the middle of it. Opening 10 locations would turn the work into a job he hates and steal the time for the thing he likes, which is how can I help Zac Solomon today.

Where this answer comes from

Show
Austin Next
Episode
Can You Engineer Serendipity?
People
Evan Baehr, Chris Taylor, Zac Solomon, Jason Scharf
Moment
Date

People

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